And Everything Stands Still
by RowenaR
Summary: Maybe Felicity Smoak keeps coming back to the Big Belly Burger because it makes the time with Oliver Queen a little more real. Post S1 finale, so spoilers.


**A/N:** Righty-o, this is my virgin fic in the fandom and it just kind of _happened_ after I watched the finale and um, I hope you all like this. I hope I got Felicity right and I'm pretty sure that this will be AU be the time we get Season 2 but for now, it felt like it needed to be written and here it is. Spoilers for the season finale, though.

PS.: For those waiting for new chapters on my WIPs, I'm currently working on getting my uni papers done before the end of September. As soon as I'm done with that, I'll dive right back in the multichapters, promise!

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**And Everything Stands Still**

„_Zweitausend Stunden hab ich gewartet  
Ich hab sie alle gezählt und verflucht  
Ich hab getrunken geraucht und gebetet  
Hab Dich flußauf- und flußabwärts gesucht  
Doch jetzt tuts nicht mehr weh  
Nee jetzt tut's nicht mehr weh  
Und alles bleibt stehn  
Und kein Sturm kommt auf wenn ich Dich seh."_

_Rio Reiser, „Junimond"_

It's been four months since "The Glades Incident" as the press keeps calling it – pretty sure just to make her snort or whatever – four months since Tommy Merlyn died, four months since they put Moira Queen in jail, four months since she last saw Oliver. Four months and it still feels like it was yesterday.

Okay, no, that's crap and it's not what it feels like to _her_, only what she thinks it should probably feel like. To her, it feels like it was in another _life_ and she doesn't even believe in reincarnation. It's like this short interlude between one end of her ordinary, boring life and the other. Oh, don't get her wrong, she _likes_ ordinary and boring, at least if that includes not having your head blasted or being shot in an underground casino or seeing the building shake all around you while you're crying, thinking _you failed this city_ and wondering why you didn't think of a second device as soon as you heard there was _one_. Redundancies are part of the hacking life, after all.

It's like it never really even happened at all, the way Oliver Queen just stood in her office one day asking her to fix a bullet riddled laptop one day and left a wrecked and broken and bleeding city the next and her losing her innocence somewhere in between.

Maybe that's why she keeps coming back to the Big Belly Burger, first to help Carly and John to rebuild it and then to just sit in one of the window seats, staring outside, burger and fries untouched for hours. Maybe she keeps coming back here because it makes the time with Oliver a little more real.

It is, in the end, the only connection she still has to him, Verdant still being closed and no one there to train in the basement, after all.

John still sometimes goes down there, "to make sure the rats kept their paws off the equipment" but they both know he keeps checking for Oliver… and maybe he too needs some reassurance that the time he spent with Oliver was every bit as real as the salmon ladder and the tennis balls on arrows.

Sometimes, she congratulates herself that this is quite some insight for someone who's better with computers than with people. Sometimes, she thinks there's a reason that she's better with computers than with people and that all the explanations she makes up in her head are just one more way to refuse to believe that Oliver is truly _gone_, that he left his city and his _people_, his goddamn _friends_ behind and that he never even turned around to say good-bye.

And, if she were honest, maybe she keeps making up those explanations, keeps thinking about why she comes back to the Big Belly Burger, keeps _coming back_ because she misses Oliver. It's a simple thing, and a scary one. Because if she were honest, she'd be able to admit that she doesn't miss working two jobs and sleeping only three to four hours each night, or the constant being in danger thing, or having to keep a secret from everyone that she cares about. If she were honest, she'd be able to admit to herself that she only misses _Oliver_.

Well.

There's this think she learned long ago.

She learned _this_: the sidekick never gets the hero. And even though John might have signed up as partner, she always knew that they were Oliver's sidekicks. She read enough comics from an age on that was officially too young to read comics at to know _that_. And she never _wanted_ to get the hero, she didn't, cross my heart and hope to die and she knows that the sidekick just never gets the hero and it still breaks her heart every time she reminds herself of that.

She knows that… "Hi… Felicity, isn't it?"

She blinks and realizes that she's been staring out the window for so long that her fries and burger should be completely cold by now, only they aren't so she also must have missed Carly exchanging the old food for fresh. She blinks again and realizes that _someone just talked to her_.

"Yes," she says and adjusts her glasses while turning around to find Laurel Lance – still gorgeous Laurel Lance – standing behind her, clutching the straps of her handbag with both her hands and looking too lost for someone who used to work in The Glades. Something deep inside of her, something _very_ irrational, hates her for still being gorgeous after everything that happened.

"I… uh… Oliver once said that you're… pretty good with computers and internet and things like that." He said that, didn't he?

Couldn't be so good if she lost him after only three weeks of tracking him, can it?

It is a miracle that she doesn't actually blurt that out and says instead, "He paid me for doing that, so… yeah, I probably am." At least she didn't say anything else that involved Oliver paying her for anything, so maybe _that_ tendency left her when Oliver did.

"So, I… I was wondering… if you could find someone for me." No, she thinks. No, I will not find Oliver for you and that same something that hates Laurel Lance for still being gorgeous after everything that happened wants to claw its way out and tell gorgeous Laurel Lance _exactly_ what she thinks about the way she behaved towards both Tommy Merlyn and Oliver Queen and ask her about why the hell she didn't just stay out of The Glades that night and why she didn't just _stop_ wrecking up both Tommy's and Oliver's lives.

She's not Helena Burtonelli, after all, though. She _knows_ that you do not judge people that way, most of all people that lost both the men they loved – hopefully loved, anyway – in the same night. She adjusts her glasses again and her eyes catch John at the bar, and it's amazing how well she can read his face now, asking her if she needs backup. She negates through a short shake of her head. She can solve this on her own.

"If you want me to find Oliver for you…"

Laurel shakes her head, vehemently and she wonders just how much of that is honest and genuine. "No, no, I want you to find my sister."

Huh. "Your sister? Your sister that drowned when the _Queen's Gambit_ sank? The sister that's been dead for five years? That sister?" Jesus fucking Christ, she did it again. She let her mouth run amok because she totally hadn't expected _that_ to be Laurel's plea.

And of course Laurel Lance now looks like she just shot Bambi. She deserved that one. "Yes, that sister. I know that it's a bit farfetched but I asked around. My father says that you are… pretty talented in… you know."

Pretty talented in committing cyber crime, yes. The only reason Quentin Lance never came back to arrest her in earnest for the things she did when she helped Oliver was probably that she saved his life. Or maybe it was that he had his own problems, having to get back into his Lieutenant's good graces and all and her having a hand in that, too. But shht, don't tell anyone about it.

Absentmindedly, she reaches behind her to grab a fry and starts nibbling at it. To be honest… she does miss the hacking. She still misses Oliver and his blue eyes and the damn abs and the way she always seemed to fluster him with the stupid things she said, for just a very tiny moment before he got back his usual Hood bearings more. But she does miss using her skills for more than just fixing e-mail accounts and retrieving data she shouldn't retrieve because otherwise people will never learn how to freaking _back-up_, too.

She regards Laurel with one last contemplating look, takes everything in, the perfect hair, the perfect face and the perfect hands and she realizes that gorgeous and perfect Laurel isn't so perfect, after all. There are dark shadows under her eyes she desperately tried to hide under not enough eye make-up. There's a certain slump to her posture, as if she finds it hard to even get up every morning, let alone always stand straight and now that she takes a closer look, Laurel only grips the straps of her handbag so hard so that no one will realize that her hands are shaking. Amazing what you can learn in less than a year with Oliver and John as your teachers.

She sits up a little straighter and pats the empty chair next to her. "Okay, show me what you've got. I can't promise you anything but I'll try my best."

The relief Laurel must be feeling now is visible all over. There's a little smile and her eyes light up with something like gratefulness – she feels embarrassed about that, given how she just thought about Laurel – and the grip on the straps lessens a little. "Well," Laurel says and pulls out a file that looks so slim that she can feel the anticipation at this job well up already, "there was this photo…"

For a moment, she looks back at the bar and John looks concerned but she signals him that things are okay at her end and maybe, she thinks, maybe things will _actually_ be okay, after all. Maybe, if she can start working her magic on a case as difficult as Sarah Lance, she will finally be able to leave the itch in her fingers to try the impossible and track Oliver again be.

She _needs_ to do that or she'll forever be heartbroken at the thought of sidekicks never getting the hero. In a way, she thinks, she's grateful to Laurel, too. Grateful enough, at least, that she'll go back down into Verdant's basement tonight to see if the rats have yet eaten up all her precious tech. If she's honest, she can't wait for it. It's been four months since Oliver left and it's time to start getting on with life, as hard as that might be. She _has_ to.

Two thousand hours I waited

Counted and cursed them all

I drank, smoked and prayed

Searched for you upstream and downstream

But it doesn't hurt anymore

Nope, doesn't hurt anymore

And everything stands still

And no storm comes up when I see you.


End file.
